The Best Residential Proxy Providers of 2021

If you’re looking to buy residential proxies, you’ve come to the right place. This page will introduce you to a variety of great providers. Don’t worry, we’ve tested each and outlined their main characteristics to make your choice easier. Without further ado, here are the best residential proxies for sale in 2021.

The Best Residential Proxies – Quick Summary:

Key Points about Residential Proxies

• Residential proxies borrow IPs from real people: their computers, mobile phones, and other devices on WiFi. They’re often called peer-to-peer proxies.
• This makes them much harder to detect than datacenter IPs.
• They also support more locations and more precise location targeting.
• Residential proxy networks include millions of IPs. However, not all IPs are available at all times because people can simply turn off their devices.
• Most residential IPs are shared and have to rotate after a while.
• You usually buy traffic to access the whole proxy network.

To learn more, you can read our guide on residential proxies.

Residential Proxies vs Other Proxy Types

When does it make sense to use residential proxies instead of, say, datacenter IPs? There are three good reasons:  

1. Your target has strong protection mechanisms. Sneaker websites, travel fare aggregators, and other sites that encounter bot traffic use IP reputation as the first line of defence. Residential IPs have a good reputation because they come from consumer internet service providers.

2. You need broad location coverage. Residential IPs come from millions of people around the world. So, they support many locations – much more than a data center could. This makes them a good choice for SEO crawling, ad verification, software localization, and similar tasks.

3. You want to browse truly anonymously. VPNs and datacenter addresses hide you but not the fact you’re using them. Residential proxies make it look like you’re browsing as a real person.

You can read our comparison of datacenter, residential, and ISP proxies to learn more.

What’s the Difference between Cheap and Premium Residential Proxies?

The obvious difference is price. Cheap providers can cost as low as $1/GB, even when you’re not buying terabytes of data. The entry level isn’t a good measure: providers like Bright Data and NetNut allow getting only 1 GB, but then you’ll be paying anywhere between $17.5 and $25/GB. That’s not to mention all the resellers that skin people in small amounts.

What do you give up by paying less? For one, features. You might have fewer locations to choose from or receive more limited targeting options. For example, Storm Proxies doesn’t allow specifying a particular country.

Then, there’s the proxy pool size. Storm Proxies and PacketStream, two of the cheapest providers on this list, gave us ten times fewer unique IPs than Smartproxy or Bright Data when we tested them. So, they’re likely to include more abused addresses and fewer proxies outside of major locations.

User experience is another concern. Premium providers will ensure 24/7 live support and a dedicated account manager to help you with your needs. This really helps if your project relies on proxies, and you need to solve issues fast.

Curiously, performance is a hit or miss. PacketStream performs surprisingly well considering its price. But it still fails to reach the level of Bright Data, Oxylabs, or Smartproxy.

How Much Do Residential Proxies Cost?

You’ll be looking at paying anywhere between $1 to $20 per gigabyte. A lot depends on how much you buy and if you commit to a long-term contract. The average for 100 GBs is around $8/GB.

Are There Residential Proxies with Unlimited Bandwidth?

Yes. Shifter and Storm Proxies both sell plans without bandwidth limits. They limit the number of ports (IPs you can access at the same time) instead. It’s very convenient because you don’t have to worry about data use. But as a rule, proxy networks with unmetered traffic are less reliable.

A Word About Free Trials

If you’re not a business, you likely won’t get a free trial. However, most providers will offer you a limited money-back guarantee. This is the market standard. Its purpose is to protect from abuse.

How We Made This List

To choose the best residential proxy providers, we made them go through extensive tests. The majority of companies on the list participated in this year’s Proxy Market Research. There, we made over 2 million connection requests for each provider over a period of three weeks. We then evaluated every aspect that matters, from performance to customer support and price.

Which Providers Have the Largest IP Pools?

Which Residential Proxies Are the Fastest?

Which Have the Highest Success Rate?

The Best Residential Proxy Providers of 2021

1. Smartproxy

The best value for the price.

Smartproxy offers great value for anyone that needs backconnect residential proxies. It strikes a rare balance of top-notch performance, affordable pricing, and enough features for most tasks. The user experience is also impeccable. There are many guides, proxy control tools, and award-winning customer support. You can start using Smartproxy with minimal interaction, as it emphasizes self-service.

Smartproxy’s only real drawbacks are no SOCKS5 support and limited targeting options ( no carrier or ASN targeting).

Features:

• 40 million peer-to-peer residential IPs
• 195 locations with country and city targeting
• Rotation every request, 10, 30 mins
• Unlimited concurrent connections
• Whitelisted IP & user:pass authentication
• API & browser extension
• Extensive documentation
• Award-winning 24/7 support

Pricing:

Starts from $75/5 GB ($15/GB). 3-day refund available.

Read the Smartproxy review for more information and performance tests.

2. Oxylabs

The best premium residential and ISP proxy provider.

Oxylabs sells premium residential proxies for businesses. The provider can offer both static and rotating IPs, though it focuses on the latter. Its proxies cover all countries and most cities in the world. You can even target them by ASN. The proxies have class-leading performance, matched only by Smartproxy and Bright Data. You’ll be getting a dedicated account manager and tips to improve your scraping success.

Oxylabs may not be the best option for beginners or individual use. The pricing is somewhat expensive at first and starts from $300. That said, it scales well as you buy up.

Features:

• 100M peer-to-peer & static residential IPs
• HTTP & HTTPS protocols
• Every country, thousands of cities, ASN targeting
• Unlimited concurrent requests
• Rotation every request, sticky sessions up to 30 mins
• Whitelisted IP & user:pass authentication
• Public API
• Good documentation
• 24/7 live support, dedicated account manager

Pricing:

Starts from $300/20 GB ($15/GB). 7-day free trial for businesses, 3-day refund for individuals.

Read the Oxylabs review for more information and performance tests.

3. Bright Data (formerly Luminati)

Highly customizable residential and ISP proxies with many features.

Bright Data is the largest proxy provider in the market. It offers a huge pool of rotating and static residential IPs. The proxies have many features, and even allow targeting by ASN. We’ve found their performance to be great when the provider didn’t impose artificial limits. Bright Data includes powerful proxy control tools, such as an API, browser extension, and an open source proxy manager. You can subscribe to a pricing plan or pay as you go. 

Like Oxylabs, Bright Data is mostly concerned with business customers. We wouldn’t recommend it for beginners – the service can be complex to use, and the pricing structure is somewhat confusing. There’s also strict KYC which rules out some gray hat use cases. 

Features:

• 72M peer-to-peer & static residential IPs
• HTTP, HTTPS & SOCKS protocols
• Every country, thousands of cities, ASN and carrier targeting
• Rotation every request, sticky sessions available
• Unlimited concurrent requests
• Whitelisted IP & user:pass authentication
• API, browser extension & proxy manager
• Extensive documentation
• 24/7 customer support

Pricing:

Starts from $500/40GB ($12.5/GB). 7-day free trial for businesses, 3-day refund for individuals.

4. NetNut

Residential and ISP proxies for a wide range of customers.

NetNut used to be the posterboy of static residential proxies, offering them in bulk to medium and large businesses. Recently, it introduced rotating residential proxies and expanded the pricing plans to include a wider audience. You can get both kinds of IPs with as few as 1 GB of traffic. Bigger clients can opt for request-based plans – but they begin from thousands of dollars. Performance-wise, NetNut did well, but it’s still behind the market leaders, Bright Data and Oxylabs.

NetNut isn’t the easiest provider to use, and it’s still best if you need proxies at scale. The cheaper plans lock features, such as API access or Skype support.

Features:

• 10M peer-to-peer and static residential IPs
• HTTP & HTTPS protocols
• 50 countries, city and state targeting in the US
• Rotation every request or keep the same IP
• Unlimited concurrent requests
• Whitelisted IP & user:pass authentication
• API, browser extension
• Mediocre documentation
• 24/7 customer support

Pricing: 

Starts from $300/20 GB ($15/GB). 7-day free trial available.

5. SOAX

Stable but slow residential proxies with flexible location targeting.

SOAX controls a network of around 8.5 million residential proxies. It stands somewhere in the middle between cheap and premium providers, similarly to Smartproxy. SOAX’s two distinguish features are rotation and location targeting. Both are very flexible: you can choose to keep an IP anywhere from 90 seconds (or less, if you pay extra) to until it’s available, in multiple increments. Targeting-wise, SOAX lets you specify not only country, but also region, city, and ASN. The proxies aren’t fast but they work impressively well.

Otherwise, SOAX is still pretty raw. This doesn’t detract too much from the service but is noticeable. Some technical choices it’s made also raise questions: HTTP(S) traffic over SOCKS5, obligatory IP whitelisting, and limited ports for plans. All in all, choose this provider for the flexibility, if you need it.

Features:

• 8.5M rotating residential IPs
• HTTP(S) over SOCKS5
• Global locations with country, city, ASN targeting
• Rotation from 90s to until available (with custom options)
• Concurrent requests limited by plan
• Whitelisted IP authentication
• API
• Live chat support

Pricing:

From $75 for 5GB ($15/GB) and 600 ports. 3-day trial for $1.99 available.

6. GeoSurf

Quality static and rotating proxies with thousands of cities.

GeoSurf is one more premium residential proxy provider. Once again, it offers both rotating and static IPs. What distinguishes GeoSurf is that it very much focuses on quality over quantity. The 2.5M IPs are handpicked from tier 1 countries and major consumer ISPs. Another strength is extensive location coverage (over 1,000 cities) and multiple rotation settings. Naturally, there’s an API and a browser extension to simplify tasks that require geo-targeting.

On the downside, GeoSurf is among the more expensive providers. The limited proxy pool may mean that you’ll encounter abused IPs more often. And the company recently lost a lawsuit to Bright Data, so its future is uncertain.

Features:

• 2.5M peer-to-peer & static residential IPs
• HTTP & HTTPS protocols
• Every country, thousands of cities
• Rotation every request, sticky sessions for 1/10/30 mins
• Unlimited concurrent requests
• Whitelisted IP & user:pass authentication
• API, browser extension
• Good documentation
• 24/7 customer support

Pricing:

Starts from $450/38 GB ($11.85/GB). Demo session available.

7. PacketStream

Cheap residential IPs with a small proxy pool.

PacketStream has extremely affordable residential proxies thanks to its unique business model. It buys bandwidth directly from people and then resells it to customers. This lets PacketStream offer IPs for as little as $1/GB with pay-as-you-go pricing.

When we tested the network, the performance was great. But we found much fewer unique IPs than the 7 million number would suggest. As a result, you can quickly start getting duplicate proxies, especially if you select a more exotic location. Still, its price and ease of use make PacketStream a decent option for beginners. Just note that the minimum deposit is $50, despite the low price per GB. Businesses that need a large proxy pool with great customer service should look elsewhere.

Features:

• 7M (?) rotating residential IPs
• HTTP & HTTPS protocols
• Global locations with country targeting
• Rotation every request, sticky sessions until available
• Unlimited concurrent requests
• User:pass authentication
• Email support

Pricing:

Starts from $50/50GB ($1/GB). Free trial available.

8. Infatica

Affordable premium residential proxies.

Infatica is a relatively new provider that sells peer-to-peer residential proxies for businesses. It tries to compete with the likes of Oxylabs, GeoSurf, and Luminati by offering most of the same features at better prices. In reality, Infatica’s proxy network works pretty well and includes all the basic features. It also scales into hundreds of requests per second without issues.

Pricing aside, Infatica still has ways to go, especially in terms of user experience. The documentation is very barebones, the dashboard uncomfortable, and proxy controls somewhat clunky. But if your company needs a lot of traffic wants to save some money, Infatica can prove a good alternative to the big guys.

Features:

• 10M rotating residential IPs
• SOCKS5 protocol with only HTTP(S) traffic
• Around 100 countries
• 1-hour proxy rotation 
• Unlimited concurrent requests
• Whitelisted IP authentication
• Minimal user documentation
• 24/7 customer support

Pricing:

Starts from $360/40GB ($9/GB). 7-day free trial available.

9. Storm Proxies

A beginner-friendly option with limited features and unlimited bandwidth.

Storm Proxies sells rotating residential proxies in the US and EU. Its main strengths are affordable pricing, instant setup, and unlimited bandwidth. On the other hand, the provider has very narrow location coverage, fewer features, and doesn’t scale well. The performance is mediocre at best, at least when we tried it.

Overall, Storm Proxies is a good beginner’s choice if you’re working with unprotected websites and don’t want to worry about bandwidth limits. You shouldn’t use it for demanding or location-sensitive tasks.

Features:

• 70,000 rotating residential IPs
• HTTP & HTTPS protocols
• US and EU locations
• Rotation every request, 5, or 15 minutes
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Whitelisted IP authentication
• 24/7 customer support

Pricing:

Starts from $19/1 port. 24-hour free trial available.